No one can study Portuguese literature without becoming deeply indebted to D. CAROLINA WILHELMA MICHAËLIS DE VASCONCELLOS. Her concise history, contributed to Groeber’s _Grundriss_ (1894), necessarily forms the basis of subsequent studies, but indeed her work is as vast as it is scholarly and accurate, and the student finds himself constantly relying on her guidance. Even if he occasionally disagrees, he cannot fail to give her point of view the deepest attention and respect. Born in 1851, the daughter of Professor Gustav Michaëlis, she has lived in Portugal during the last forty years and is the wife of the celebrated art critic, Dr. Joaquim de Vasconcellos (born in 1849). Her edition of the _Cancioneiro da Ajuda_ (1904) is a masterpiece of historical reconstruction and literary criticism, and her influence on Portuguese literature generally is as wide as her encouragement and assistance of younger scholars are generous.[10] _Femina_, as was said of the Princess Maria, _undequaque spectatissima et doctissima_. Most of the works of DR. THEOPHILO BRAGA are of too provisional a nature to be of permanent value, but a summary, _Edade Medieval_ (1909), _Renascença_ (1914), _Os Seiscentistas_ (1916), _Os_ _Arcades_ (1918), gives his latest views. The best detailed criticism of the literature of the nineteenth century is that of DR. FIDELINO DE FIGUEIREDO, Member of the Academy of Sciences and Editor of the _Revista de Historia: Historia da Litteratura Romantica Portuguesa_ (1913) and _Historia da Litteratura Realista_ (1914). The only completely methodical history of Portuguese literature in existence is the brief manual by the learned ex-Rector of Coimbra University, DR. JOAQUIM MENDES DOS REMEDIOS: _História da Literatura Portuguêsa_ (5th ed., Coimbra, 1921), since it contains that rarity in Portuguese literature: an index.[11] Dr. Figueiredo published a short essay in its general bibliography in 1914 (_Bibliographia portuguesa de critica litteraria_), largely increased in a new (1920) edition, but otherwise little has been done in this respect (apart from a few special authors). The bibliography attached to the present book[12] follows--_longo intervallo_--the lines of PROFESSOR JAMES FITZMAURICE-KELLY’S _Bibliographie de l’Histoire de la Littérature Espagnole_ (Paris, 1913). After its proved excellence it would, indeed, have been folly to adopt any other method.